Desinformação online, liberdade de expressão e democracia: uma proposta de modelo regulatório híbrido

Abstract

The work studies online disinformation of an electoral poltical nature with a focus on the theoretical framework of free speech. Its problem situation translates into the question of how to build a regulatory model to confront this discursive phenomenon. The hypothesis is that disinformation violates the foundations of free speech and attacks the democracy itself, not falling within the correct exercise of freedom of information and being illicit spreech. This study finds that the busnisses model of providers involved in the issue does not encourage them to face the issue (self-regulation) and that the State, for various reasons, is not capable of resolving the issue (state regulation). Hence the general objective consisting of the presentation of minimum elements that must make up a hybrid arrangment to combat disinformative discourse. With this, the specific objectives are, one, to deal with disinformation environment, wich means looking into the crisis of democracy, the architecture of the Internet, the situation of journalism and the phenomenon of post-truth; two, analyse the incompatibility of disinformation with free speech, importing this in the development of this freedom, in the work of defining disinformative speech, with its minimum componentes, and in exposing justifications qualifying such speech as conflicting with said right; three, examine the theoretical explanations of the self-regulatory model on this topic and how this is revealed in practice; four, research the theoretical contributions and practical experiences of the state regulatory model, based on experiences of comparative law and some fragmented actions in Brazil; and, five, propose some minimum elements of a hybrid regulatory scheme, based mainly on German and European examples implemented. Using the sociological legal strand, the work undestands the interrelationship between disininformation, democracy and free speech, in the Internet environment. To this end, inductive-deductive and hypothetical-deductive reasoning are undertanken. Regarding the study process, the research applies comparative legal investigations, to understand how disiformation is treated in other countries; descriptive legal, to understand how the phenomenon works; and propositional legal, with the objective of offering solution parameters for the problem situation. As the methodological techniques and procedures, the strategy of theoretical research combined with evaluative research is used and, as a procedure, the collection and analysis of documents, legislation and jurisprudence.